


We're Gonna Score Tonight

by Kelouisa



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: Birthday, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Other, bowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 07:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kelouisa/pseuds/Kelouisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tuesday night was Jason's birthday.  At a loss for a fun way to celebrate, the gang decides to try out Death Alley, Willie's new bowling lanes.</p>
<p>Just a silly little bit of fun :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Gonna Score Tonight

Tuesday night was Jason’s birthday. Nathaniel suggested we all take the night off and take him out to celebrate, since Jason didn’t have any plans. So Nathaniel cooked a lovely Susie-homemaker meal, real roast beef, mashed potatoes that he’d made me peel, biscuits from scratch. Micah, at least, had to set the table. He made napkin swans out of the nice linen napkins that Nathaniel had bought a few weeks before, but we hadn’t yet used. 

Jason came over shortly before dinner. Our foursome swelled with Cherry and Zane’s arrival, but Micah was called away from his plate when his beeper went off. His work for the Coalition doesn’t have vacation time. 

“I’ll call you on my cell when I’m done, find out where you are, and meet you.” Micah shoveled a few bites into his mouth on his way out the door, looking longingly at the abandoned plate of food. “Don’t have too much fun without me.” That last bit was muffled, then he was gone. 

After I’d helped Nathaniel clear the dinner plates, Nathaniel brought out the cake. They all made me sing to the blaze of the candles on the cake. Zane asked Jason what he wished for. Jason gave me a leer. 

“You were asked _what_ you wanted, not who. And that particular _what_ is out of the question.” 

“Aw, Anita, you’re no fun.” He pouted prettily for a second, sticking his lower lip out. Then he perked up. “Will you at least give me my birthday spankings?” 

The image rushed to my mind and the blush ran back down my body. Jason laughed and slipped his arm around my waist. 

“Oh, that reaction was enough for me.” 

I playfully smacked him on the arm. 

“More, more!” 

Mimicking a growl, I pulled away from him and accepted a slice of red velvet birthday cake from Nathaniel. I put the kitchen table between Jason and myself and sat down. The first bite of cake melted on my tongue. Nathaniel was getting more domestic by the day, and was darn good at it. Good thing, too. My idea of cooking was putting bagels in the toaster. All my were-buddies needed a lot more food than that. I’d bought him a frilly apron to wear while he puttered around the kitchen. Even though it seemed silly, he liked it and wore it. He especially liked to wear it, and nothing else, while serving me, quote, breakfast in bed, end quote. 

Jason finally sat down and behaved, a towering slice that looked to be nearly a quarter of the three layer cake disappearing into his mouth. Sometimes he’d look at me and deliberately lick his lips. But once Nathaniel settled down with his slice of cake in the chair next to me, foot hooked around my ankle, Jason stopped trying to get me to flirt, or, rather, stopped trying to make me blush. Instead, he and Zane talked about where we should go. 

“Dancing?” 

“Nah.” Well, I suppose with Jason and Nathaniel being strippers, they got their fill of dancing any night of the week. 

“We could stay home and get drunk and play Uno.” 

Jason smirked. “Only if it’s strip-Uno.” 

“Bowling?” 

No one said no. I laughed. “Bowling it is. I don’t think I’ve been bowling since I was ten. Where is there to bowl around here?” 

“Oh, we definitely have to go to Death Alley.” 

Uh oh. Death Alley was one of JC Corp’s most campy investments. To give Jean-Claude credit, it was Willie’s idea. Willie got his funds, his chance to prove his worth to Jean-Claude. Of all the businesses to put a vampiric stamp on, a bowling alley would be the last thing I would think of. But, somehow, it worked. The vampire-loving masses in Saint Louis simply loved camp. 

Micah made it home just as we headed out to our cars. He simply shook his head when we told him where we were going and got into my Jeep without further comment. I hadn’t been to the lanes, yet, so I followed Zane’s beat-up Found On Road Dead. It turned out that Death Alley was only about six blocks away from the Circus. I considered swinging by and asking along Jean-Claude or Asher, but remembering the look on Damian’s face when he had come upstairs after dinner, after dark, was enough to convince me otherwise. Maybe they were simply too old to enjoy some simple Midwest entertainment. 

In October, the outside of the bowling alley would seem rather normal. Cobwebs and ghosts, orange and purple twinkle lights, the tombstone painted on the door were all regular Halloween fare. Going into December, it just seemed like the owner had been too lazy to take down. Personally, I think that Micah thought the fake cadaver in the black-lit entranceway wearing glow-in-the-dark bowling shirt and shoes was funny. He was just really good at hiding his laughter. Well, OK, maybe I was the only one who found it funny. 

Rock music blared from the lanes, until I could barely shout and be heard by the shoe-jockey at the desk. It was a busy night. Boo Bowling was in full swing. The six of us rented a lane for three hours. We got our shoes and trooped through the gaggle of teens to a lane dead center. No matter what month, it was Halloween here. Ghosts and spider webs hung from the ceilings, glowing in the black light. The ball returns were painted gray and shaped somewhat like tombstones, with witty epitaphs on them like: 

_Lester Moore_

_Here lies Lester Moore._

_Four slugs from a 44._

_No Les,_

_No more._

and, 

_Sally Briggs_

_Underneath this pile of stones,_

_Lies all that’s left of Sally Jones._

_Her name was Briggs, it was not Jones_

_But Jones was used to rhyme with stones._

and, 

_Sacred to the memory of Anthony Drake_

_Who died for peace and quietness sake._

_His wife was constantly scoldin’ and scoffin’_

_So he sought for repose in a $12 coffin._

It was rather sad, really, that it made me laugh so hard. Then Jason walked up, a ball cupped in each hand, slung low in front of him. 

“Jay-sus, Anita, look at these huge blue balls you’ve given me!” The guys laughed and even Cherry giggled. I swaggered up to him as confidently as I could in slightly-too-large bowling shoes and jabbed my fingers right into one of his balls. He made a grunt, and an “oh yeah,” and that set off everyone’s laughter again. I set the ball down in the ball-return trough. Once the black light hit it, I really looked at it. The ball was blue, but still clear, and anywhere from one to three inches deep in the heavy plastic or Lucite or whatever, was a skull. To bowl, you had to stick your fingers into the holes bored into the eye sockets of the skull, and thumb into its gaping mouth. Good grief. 

Jason stuck his fingers into the ball he still held and, with an elaborate wind-up, sent it down the lanes. The crash his strike made had everyone within four lanes of us peering over. After three frames of this, I realized the unfair advantage they all had on me. Apparently, lycanthropes, with little practice, can chuck a ball and hit what they aim for every time. My only saving grace was that force does not equal back-spin, and my score only came close to any of theirs because of their tendencies for seven-ten splits when the ball struck head-on. 

Except for Micah. 

Our jeers and shouts stopped when he threw his fourth strike in a row. Then his fifth. I had to raise my eyebrow at him in curiosity. He played innocent and shrugged his shoulders, perching on the chair next to me and intently looking away from any of us. 

“Look at that ass!” Jason hooted, as I took the first step of my approach. My step stuttered, my face flaming. I flipped him off, then started over. “Is that an invitation?” I started over again. This time I managed to throw the ball down the lane, but it bumped into the gutter near the ten-pin. I turned back to the ball-return, but almost fell on my ass. Jason had been standing right behind me, so close that he’d had to mimic my movements towards the lane. He didn’t let me fall, though. Instead, he caught me in his arms and planted one hell of a kiss on me. It was the sort of kiss that made me forget where I was, and I kissed him back. 

When he put me down, (he’d been holding me so tightly that most of my weight was no longer on my own feet), I could only see his face. He smiled again, bright, mischievous. The teenage girls on the lane next to us hooted and catcalled. Jason extricated himself from my arms, and took a bow towards them. I went and sat back down next to Micah, a stupid kind of grin on my face, I’m sure. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been drinking beer to match the guys. But, hey, I liked a good beer once in a while. 

Meanwhile, Jason was playing up to the uproar from the girls on the lane next to us. As he leaned over to let the ball fly down the lane, one of the teenagers echoed his, “Look at that ass!” His jeans did tighten quite perfectly over his bottom when he bent and moved. We all looked. But, Jason being Jason, he had to answer. He walked right up to the girls. 

“Hey, you can look all you like. Go ahead. It’s a nice ass.” 

“But don’t touch!” Zane strode up, eager for the game. 

“Hey, now, why not?” Jason flashed his dazzling grin on the girl in front of him. She melted like just about any straight woman would do. 

“She’s jailbait, man.” He sighed, throwing one arm over Jason’s shoulders. 

Jason lifted the girl’s hand to his lips, a move more reminiscent of Jean-Claude. He looked into her eyes, a devilish glint in his. “Is that true? Well, maybe in a few years, then.” She went back to her friends, and they huddled around her, giggling and squealing. Ugh, was I ever that young? 

Just then, the song changed overhead. The colored lights overhead started swirling and strobing. Nathaniel slipped back down the three stairs to our seats, but I hadn’t noticed he’d been gone. I heard him in the momentary silence before the song began. 

“They wouldn’t play Nine Inch Nails, but I thought of something better.” 

And just then, the intro blared out of the dozens of speakers littering the place, quickly spurring on everyone to chant along. 

“ _Oh, my god, Becky, look at her butt..._ ” 

And suddenly, we had our own not-so-private floor show as Jason and Nathaniel dragged Zane up on the lane approach and started a somewhat lewd dance to Sir Mix-A-Lot. The girls from the lane next door were cheering, gathered around the ball return, where Nathaniel had leapt. Zane’s rotations seemed aimed mostly at Cherry, at least. Only Micah, and the fact that I hadn’t had quite enough beer yet, kept me from getting up and gyrating with the rest of them. 

When the song got to the line, “My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hon,” even Micah was singing along. We didn’t even notice Willie hurrying towards us until he started gesturing to Jason and his shiny harvest gold suit hid the boys from our view. 

“Hey, fang-face, it’s my birthday!” I heard Jason shout. And while Nathaniel stopped and jumped down off the ball return, tucking in his shirt, Jason kept dancing, which was apparently what Willie was trying to prevent. He rushed over to me next, in that human sort of rushing he hadn’t quite gotten out of the habit of yet. 

“Come on, Anita. Will you stop him? We have minors in here.” He gestured wildly again, trying to get Jason’s attention. 

“The song’s almost over, Willie. By the time we’re done arguing about it, there will be nothing to argue over.” 

Zane draped his arm around Willie and tried to lead him away. 

“Hey, man, relax. We’re just having a little fun.” 

Willie’s hands fluttered. “Well, maybe next time, you could have your fun somewhere else. The last thing I need to explain to Jean-Claude is why Jason got arrested for public indecency.” 

At the mention of cops, I looked up and around. Didn’t see any yet. Probably shouldn’t press our luck. Jason probably was a little wild tonight, and if I’d maybe had less beer, I might have thought so earlier. Willie left, pacified for the moment, and I collected Jason from his makeshift stage. 

“Maybe we should leave. Willie is a little uptight tonight.” 

Jason’s mood hadn’t been dampened, at least. He was still breathless and laughing. Micah put his arm around Jason, a calming presence as always. 

“How about a run?” It wasn’t the full moon yet, but it was within a week. A good run would work all this fun out of their system. All of them, except me, I supposed. 

“You’ll be all right tonight?” 

“Sure, I can head over to the Circus. Jean-Claude wasn’t really expecting me tonight, but it’ll be OK.” 

The girls next door seemed to be disappointed we were leaving. I collected rented shoes, and a phone number slipped into Jason’s shirt pocket. The rest of them seemed energized at the thought of a run in the clear, cold night. Their exuberance buoyed them up together, bursting out of the door into the darkness. I followed, after dropping off the shoes, to see them piled in the back of Zane’s pick-up. Jason had already changed, remnants of his shirt around his shaggy neck, tongue lolling in the wind as the truck sped off towards the edge of the city. 

As for how I spent the rest of my night off... well, that is another story altogether.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted at the Pomme de Sang Anita Blake fanfic site. Just consolidating and moving my old stuff in with my new.


End file.
